Poor misguided girl
by starshine
Summary: Why should Ward get love when Skye was still so angry and heartbroken? What kind of contrary universe was this, where people so misshapen and carrying so many dents got their happy ending and she, who should be happy for a change, was having nightmares almost daily? She hasn't forgiven Ward, how could it be that he was happy and she broken?


It started innocently enough. With Skye sitting in the lab and ranting at Fitz, just as always lately. She had been between missions, bored out of her mind, some downtime with her friends was one of the only ways she got to unwind anymore. They had first talked about everything imaginable before the conversation shifted to the Playground gossip. More importantly, the hottest topic on the base that was the brainwashed ex SHIELD, ex Hydra agent, and apparently a lifelong member of The Traitor Defense Squad. Three months after the girl had arrived at the base, she and Ward were still communicating. Skye didn't remember who had discovered the fact, or how. Nobody from Coulson's team was all that tight with Kara. The first week Skye had made an effort to be friendly with the poor girl, but it had been too much to promise. Kara had been nice and open enough at first, had perked up when Skye came up to her and chatted for a while in the canteen, making small talk and easing the lost ex-agent. That ended quickly after she had mentioned that she was "Skye". The other girl just clammed up. She hadn't been discourteous, or snippy, or aggressive. She just signaled a deep discomfort with Skye's presence that didn't improve a bit over next months. Skye first smiled, then complained to Simmons, then glared, and finally gave up. The brainwashed agent wasn't quite right in the head, and clearly still very messed up when it came to relationships. Her unwavering affection for one Grant Ward was easy proof of that.

Skye blamed Coulson for that one, to be quite honest. The poor misguided girl had basically had a breakdown upon figuring out that Ward had happily hightailed out of the arctic base, avoiding responsibility and probably not wanting to receive any more choice words from their entire team. Coulson had been the one to take Kara aside and talk her through that. Skye and Fitz had eavesdropped on the monitors, while Simmons had - strangely - chosen to pass on the perfectly good opportunity to shoot some more jokes at Ward's expense and disappeared to her bunk without talking to anyone. The conversation had been weird. Coulson never once played the most obvious card, that being the fact that Ward had chosen to abandon Kara to save his skin, opting to sweeten the truth instead. He went as far as to say the traitor had her best interests in mind, and all but made excuses that actually painted Ward in a semi- decent light.

In Skye's opinion, he did deliver on his intel and had maintained his mouth shut, so there was that. It was probably for the best that he had weaseled away, avoiding a renewed stay in Vault D. SHIELD had other things to worry about.

The poor girl had been heartbroken, but Coulson's talk seemed to actually help. She did demand be allowed to go off base, and when Coulson tried to talk her out of it, she wasted no time in trying to escape. She hadn't been holding back on violence, either. After the commotion and Kara announcing that she wasn't a SHIELD prisoner and they had no authority to detain her, the Director had no choice but to acknowledge her demand. She went off, and funnily enough came back two hours later, glaring daggers at her phone. May had Skye hack it as a safety precaution, yielding a not-quite-unexpected result of an hour long conversation with a certain number that was already out of the States.

Whatever Ward's intentions with the girl, he did seem to succeed in convincing her to stay put. Agent 33 now trained, reported to her supervisor, talked easily with Bobbi and even went on a couple of tentative, easy missions. She could be pronounced to be firmly on her way to healing, were she not talking to Ward almost every day.

Talk was not the word, though. On such a packed base, there was no way to achieve privacy, and so they messaged instead. Skye didn't even remember how that piece of information became public knowledge. In all probability, Kara had naively told someone. She had been very open and content to talk about Ward in the beginning. It took the frowning looks and not a few incredulous comments for her to get the hint that Ward was a forbidden theme around the Playground.

Yet still, she talked to him. And everybody knew. The look that came up on her face, the smile that lit up from inside every time her mobile pinged was hard to miss. Incredible, but true. Being stalked by Ward actually made her happy.

Nothing had apparently changes while Skye had been away. She had been gone for two weeks, and upon coming home had crossed paths with Kara and made yet one go at being friendly to her. Her greeting had been distractedly acknowledged, but Kara didn't take her eyes from her phone.

"Can you believe her? I bet the therapist tells her to drop it every day. And Bobbi too. It's so unhealthy. I mean, it's like she isn't even trying to leave the past behind!"

"Ward can be quite manipulative. Who knows what he tells her on that phone," grumbled Fitz.

"We should get Coulson to stop her from doing it."

"You'll be disappointed. Coulson won't speak ill of Ward in front of her."

" I know. Believe me, I've tried. Well, maybe if we get some proof..."

The intention was noble enough, but that didn't mean Skye didn't feel awful for bumping into the poor misguided girl and lifting the phone off her. Had they been out on a mission, she would have never been able to get the drop on Kara - she was quite an accomplished field agent. But she had long since dropped her guard when on the Playground. She had made quite a few friends among the agents. Just not with their little group.

"Let's see what's actually there."

No password protection worth hacking. It did occur to Skye belatedly that they might be overdoing it - according to all witnesses, Ward and Kara had been very lovey dovey on occasion. If Ward continued to play up the romanticism with her, who knew what Skye would actually find on the phone...

But the messaging app was opening already, and she signed with relief when the content that materialized on screen was nothing untoward. It fact, last communication between the two was a picture sent by Ward. A photo of a gigantic, misshaped, incredibly strange cactus in the middle of a desert.

"What the bloody hell?" Mouthed Fitz.

Skye scrolled up. There were two other pictures of cacti in there, both exemplars clearly chosen due to their exotic shape and general weirdness. No comments accompanied the photos on Ward's side, although Kara clearly knew what was going on as there were two smiling faces from her in reaction.

"Code?" Asked Fitz.

Skye shrugged and continued scrolling.

The messages were short, though frequent enough and mostly random. Comments about weather (apparently annoyingly hot on Ward's end), food (apparently hideous due to lack of sweets), and simple lines such as "good morning beautiful" or "everything OK?" On Kara's side, there were short answers in form of little smiling faces, thumbs up and daily updates. Said updates were never revealing in nature, so that she couldn't be called out on giving away SHIELD secrets, just general things like "had a pretty good day", "remembered my Academy exams while doing progressive muscle training" and "wondering whether to go home for the weekend, mom sounds worried." There was a little conversation after that one, consisting of Ward latching onto that with a "great idea" comment that had Skye perking up, but ended being nothing more than a pep talk gently edging Kara to go as she fretted over the fact that she didn't quite remember her childhood house layout.

It all seemed so... Mundane. Domestic. Innocent. Daily messages, silly ones when there was nothing to tell and short sweet ones when something was amiss. Sweet... Skye never thought she'd associate this word with Ward. He was definitely playing some kind of game there. Of course he was. But no game was worth so many months of painstakingly attentive conversation. He could have gone for his gruff bad people skills persona if he was going to be faking it for so long. Coming online once a week would have been enough to string along someone as broken as poor Kara.

Skye scrolled past notes and smilies, taking in the infrequent photos. Another one of a giant cactus with a piece of paper hanging on it saying "for the Bahamas windowsill". Kara in two different dresses, asking which one. Ward telling her "both", the interaction developing into a fake-fight about how SHIELD agents didn't get paid enough while independent contractors did, with Ward rueing being the only one to save money for their future island villa. Kara telling him off and suggesting to first save enough for the postal charges of the infamous cactus.

A blurry picture of a newspaper in French, some side article about a nest of Somalian pirates finally being found and taken care of during a secret services rundown.

Ward all but complaining of boredom during a ten days long stakeout with local people who didn't speak any of the six languages available to him, and Kara telling him to learn a seventh. Him answering that he was already doing that, lamenting not being able to show it off because he had no clue how to write anything.

Another photo, this time of signs written in the sand, him claiming his companions wrote them for her at his request but never offering the meaning, and Kara coming up with all the ways they could have trolled him to their hearts' content.

Kara sending him a picture of Bobbi and her training and asking for one of them all in return.

A misaligned pic taken against the settling sun of three men by a fire, rucksacks and weapons thrown all around them. No faces, of course not. Ward's outline still easily recognizable between the other two, tactical gear on minus the vest, hair longer then before and somewhat wild. Posture relaxed. For all the weapons in sight, the scene conveyed peace and easy camaraderie.

Skye stopped scrolling, hands shaking a little. He didn't deserve peace. Why should Ward get to have all this when his ex team was still pretty much in shambles? She steeled her heart the best she knew, reminded herself every day that he deserved hell and she was happy that she shot him, and yet the steely cage could only hold the pieces of her heart together and did nothing to help mend the fractures that festered on the inside. Sure, Fitz was talking like before, creating new designs no other engineer on the Playground could understand or match, and yet he was so utterly unhappy, avoiding Simmons like a plague. The last day they have spoken was right after the arctic mission, and not once since that day it seemed. Whatever had happened between them, neither wanted to share with Skye. Meanwhile Simmons was withering away day after day, silently losing color, weight and sleep until she was a ghost who didn't look at anyone and in turn couldn't be seen.

Why should Ward get love when Skye was still so angry and heartbroken? What kind of contrary universe was this, where people so misshapen and carrying so many dents got their happy ending and she, who should be happy for a change with her biological and her adoptive families and all her friends, was having nightmares almost daily?

She hasn't forgiven Ward, how could it be that he was happy and she broken?

She was woken from her musings when the screen went black, and realized that Fitz wasn't peering over her shoulder anymore. The genius had long gone back to whatever project he was working on. Skye stood up and slowly put the phone down on the floor near the entrance to the lab. Kara would think that she just lost it, as she now trusted see who lived on the Playground. Maybe she didn't even need to leave it there, and should give it directly to Kara instead... She'd probably thank Skye for finding it. She'd never suspect Skye actually stole it in a petty fit.

Poor misguided girl.


End file.
